SHOWMAN OR CON MAN?
A new film based on the life of PT Barnum tells the story of the circus owner’s enterprising but often unorthodox rise to world fame
HIS obituaries described him as “The greatest showman on Earth”. He all-but invented modern celebrity, made a fortune performing for millions, and created spectacles so popular that even when many were exposed as frauds, people still clamoured to see them.
But PT Barnum, now the subject of a new film starring Hugh Jackman, didn’t get involved with the circus at all until he was 60. And his career in entertainment began with a very deliberate hoax. “I don’t believe in duping the public,” the showman once said, “I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them.”
According to Jackman, who says he has wanted to portray the showman for years: “He knew how to make something out of nothing, how to turn lemons into lemonade. He followed his own path, and turned any setback he had into a positive.”
From the beginning Barnum was a man driven by money. Born Phineas Taylor Barnum in the small town of Bethel Connecticut in 1810, he was raised in poverty: his father struggled as an innkeeper and as a child he soon learned the necessity of hard work.
According to his New York Times obituary, “When he was only six years of age he drove cows to and from pasture, weeded the kitchen garden at the back of the humble house in which he was born, shelled corn, and as he grew older rode the plow horse.”
He also showed a keen sense of entrepreneurship, peddling homemade sweets and making enough money by the age of 12 to buy his own cow.
As a young man he tried his hand at a range of enterprises including keeping a general store, a book-auctioning business, running a lottery and even starting a newspaper, which saw him jailed for two months for libel.
After his release he quit Bethel for good and – now 25 and married to wife Charity – headed for New York. It was a move that would make him fantastically successful – but also lead to accusations of exploitation that dogged him for the rest of his life.
When Barnum was introduced to former slave Joice Heth he hit on the idea of using her to tap into people’s fascination with the stranger side of existence. Advertising her as the 161-year-old nurse of former President George Washington he exhibited Heth as “the most astonishing and interesting curiosity in the world”. Visitors queued to gaze at a woman who had lived over a century and a half.
BARNUM worked Joice for up to 12 hours a day until she died a year later. Ever one to turn a setback into potential profit, he started a rumour she had been a ventriloquist’s dummy… and then hosted a live autopsy with spectators paying to see her revealed as human all along. The autopsy also showed that she was, in fact, no more than 80 years old.
No matter: Barnum had seen the future. He used the profits to set up Barnum’s American Museum, installing a lighthouse on the roof and filling it with a bizarre collection of “curiosities”.
His most famous early attraction was “the world’s only mermaid”. It drew huge crowds though it was in fact the mummified remains a monkey sewn on to the tail a fish.
The Fiji Mermaid was soon joined by a parade of human oddities, some of whom became famous in their own right. These included General Tom Thumb, billed as “the Smallest Person that ever Walked Alone” but was actually two-foottall Charles Stratton, aged five, who had been dressed up and coached to smoke cigars and drink wine.
He was joined by the genuine original Siamese twins Chang and Eng and Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy – Russian circus performer Fodor Jeftichew who suffered from hypertrichosis, a condition that causes excessive hair growth. Barnum claimed Jo-Jo had been caught in a cave by hunters, and would have him bark for the crowds.
Also in the museum was bearded lady Annie Jones who had a beautiful of of singing voice. And it was she who might have proved the inspiration for Barnum’s next showbiz move.
In 1850 he brought opera star Jenny Lind “the Swedish Nightingale” to America – with unprecedented results. When she arrived to begin a nationwide tour organised by Barnum, more than 30,000 people crowded into the New York docks to catch a glimpse of her.
It had been a huge gamble: he had persuaded Lind to come out of retirement and promised her $1,000 a night (£22,500 today). But it was a gamble that paid off spectacularly.
That 94-date, nine-month tour not only netted him $500,000 (£11.25million today) but also allbut invented modern merchandising techniques with Jenny Lindbranded opera glasses, women’s hats, paper dolls and even chewing tobacco. There were also rumours of an affair between the two – hotly denied by both sides.
Meanwhile, Barnum opened America’s first aquarium. In 25 years more than 38 million people visited his museum – more than the entire population of the US at that time. But after fires destroyed it in 1865 and 1868, he moved on.
IN 1870, at the age of 60, Barnum went into the circus trade, first as PT Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome and then, in collaboration with ringmaster James Bailey, as Barnum & Bailey’s.
The first three-ring circus in the world, it became a phenomenon, touring on both sides of the Atlantic, and as well as a dazzling array of acrobats and magicians, also featured Barnum’s customary collection of oddities including Lionel the Lion-Faced Man and Jumbo, an African elephant bought from London Zoo and which he claimed was the largest in the world.
In 1873 wife Charity died. He married Englishwoman Nancy Fish, 40 years his junior, just 13 weeks later, and as well as becoming involved with politics and campaigning against slavery, he was elected mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and founded the town hospital in 1878.
In 1890 he suffered a stroke – perhaps fittingly while on stage – and died the following year. Many newspapers took the unprecedented step of publishing his obituary while he was still alive so the great man could read them.
He left behind £10million and a reputation, not only as the greatest showman ever but as one of history’s canniest businessmen: many of his obituaries pointed out that even when his customers knew they were being conned they tended not to mind purely because the con itself was so entertaining.
As he said himself: “I have not duped the world. I have generally given people the worth of their money twice told.”
The Greatest Showman is in cinemas now.